When we were building our house, our contractor often had a saying: “Cheap things end up being expensive.” He pointed out that if you buy something cheap, it’s often cheap because it’s lower quality, and it’s more likely to break or wear out faster. Then when it breaks, you’ll just have to spend more money to replace it with something better. In the long term, you’ll lose out if you always try to save money by settling for poor-quality goods simply because they cost less.
Now, whether that philosophy had anything to say about his building skills or the price he was charging us—or whether he was accusing us of being cheapskates—is a conversation best saved for another day. Nevertheless, I still often think of his catchphrase years
